A nice passage showcasing Walter Lippmann's pragmatism, and his disdain for monistic, theoretic approaches to political reform. From
Drift and Mastery:
Closely related in essence, though outwardly quite different, is what might be
called the panacea habit of mind. Beginning very often in some penetrating insight
or successful analysis, this sort of mind soon
becomes incapable of seeing anything beside that portion of reality which sustains
the insight and is subject to the analysis. A
good idea, in short, becomes a fixed idea.
One group of American socialists can see only the advantage of strikes, another of
ballots. One reformer sees the advantages
of the direct primaries in Wisconsin: they
become the universal solvent of political
evil. You find engineers who don't see why
you can't build society on the analogy of
a steam engine ; you find lawyers, like Taft,
who see in the courts an intimation of
heaven ; sanitation experts who wish to treat
the whole world as one vast sanitarium ; lovers who wish to treat it as one vast happy
family; education enthusiasts who wish to
treat it as one vast nursery. No one who
undertook to be the Balzac of reform by
writing its Human Comedy could afford to
miss the way in which the reformer in each
profession tends to make his specialty an
analogy for the whole of life. The most
amazing of all are people who deal with the
currency question. Somehow or other, long
meditation seems to produce in them a feeling that they are dealing with the crux of
human difficulties.
Then there is the panacea most frequently propounded by voluble millionaires: the
high cost of living is the cost of high living, and thrift is the queen of the virtues.
Sobriety is another virtue, highly commended, — in fact there are thousands of people
who seriously regard it as the supreme social
virtue. To those of us who are sober and
still discontented, the effort to found a political party on a colossal Don't is not very
inspiring. After thrift and sobriety, there
is always efficiency, a word which covers a
multitude of confusions. No one in his
senses denies the importance of efficient action, just as no one denies thrift and sober
living. It is only when these virtues become
the prime duty of man that we rejoice in
the poet who has the courage to glorify the
vagabond, preach a saving indolence, and
glorify Dionysus. Be not righteous overmuch is merely a terse way of saying that
virtue can defeat its own ends. Certainly,
whenever a negative command like sobriety
absorbs too much attention, and morality is
obstinate and awkward, then living men have become cluttered in what was meant to
serve them.
There are thousands today who, out of
patience with almost everything, believe passionately that some one change will set
everything right. In the first rank stand
the suffragettes who believe that votes for
women will make men chaste. I have just
read a book by a college professor which announces that the short ballot will be as deep
a revolution as the abolition of slavery.
There are innumerable Americans who believe that a democratic constitution would
create a democracy. Of course, there are
single taxers so single-minded that they believe a happy civilization would result from
the socialization of land values. Everything
else that seems to be needed would follow
spontaneously if only the land monopoly
were abolished.
The syndicalists suffer from this habit of
mind in an acute form. They refuse to consider any scheme for the reorganization of
industry. All that will follow, they say, if only you can produce a General Strike. But
obviously you might paralyze society, you
might make the proletariat supreme, and
still leave the proletariat without the slightest idea of what to do with the power it had
won.
What happens is that men gain some insight into society and concentrate their energy upon it. Then when the facts rise up
in their relentless complexity, the only way
to escape them is to say: Never mind, do
what I advocate, and all these other things
shall be added unto you.
There is still another way of reacting
toward a too complicated world. That way
is to see so much good in every reform that
you can't make up your mind where to apply your own magnificent talents. The result is that you don't apply your talents at
all.
Reform produces its Don Quixotes who
never deal with reality; it produces its
Brands who are single-minded to the brink
of ruin; and it produces its Hamlets and its Rudins who can never make up their minds.
What is common to them all is a failure to
deal with the real world in the light of its
possibilities. To try to follow all the aliases
of drift is like attacking the hydra by cutting off its heads. The few examples given
here of how men shirk self-government
might be extended indefinitely. They are
as common to radicals as to conservatives.
You can find them flourishing in an orthodox church and among the most rebellious socialists.
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